ADI Design Index is the publication of ADI, the Italian Association for industrial Design, that collects, year after year, the best of Italian design put in to production, picked by the ADI design permanent observatory. Compasso d’Oro ADI is the most ancient and authoritative international design prize, a brainchild of Gio Ponti since 1954.

Rarely a building — in this case a standardized architecture system, designed and patented from scratch by Spacelab Architects — receives an acknowledgment of this kind, usually dedicated to state of the art, mass produced industrial objects and tools: our efforts to overcome the limits of traditional buildings — usually one-offs, hence with defects typical of prototypes — filling the gap in efficiency between architecture and other advanced product design sectors, have been the cause of the jury’s particular attention.

Thanks to all the partners and the labbers who contributed at this special stage of our work.

But our research continues apace: this international recognition of excellence drives us to further push the boundaries of the standardized architecture theme, striving to seamlessly integrate a straightforward design research with the highest quality execution and sustainability. We still have many axes in the sleeve in this regard, and we look forward to show them to the public in the coming seasons, along with amazing, world-class technologic partners.

Special thanks to OMA, Fabrizia Vecchione and Ippolito Pestellini who invited us in this adventure, and thanks to all the amazing friends, institutions and partners that will take part in this project.

More details will be revealed in the following months. Stay tuned on the Spacelab Facebook Page for some sneak peeks!

Form, substance is the prologue written by Luca Silenzi for Pure Hardcore Icons(Artifice Books, London 2013), a manifesto on pure form in architecture conceived by the Beijing-Paris-based WAI Architecture Think Tank (Cruz Garcia+Nathalie Frankowski).

The text is a perspective on the dialectic between form and architecture, deepening the fascination of some primitive, timeless formal concepts inside the mind of designers, jury members and clients.

We are honoured to announce that Luca Silenzi – Spacelab Architects co-founder and director – is featured as contributor in the fourth issue of CLOG, dedicated to the topic of “rendering”, with an essay entitled “Real VS Plausible”.

As information is distributed and consumed at an increasingly rapid pace, one of the most effective (or at least pervasive) ways to communicate architectural ideas is through renderings. Typically a perspectival image that can be understood without any knowledge of architectural drawing conventions, the rendering derives power from its accessibility to a wide audience-hence its crucial role in design competitions, client presentations, press releases, and other such public forums.

While these architectural visualizations are certainly nothing new, advances in software and hardware have enabled renderings to be made faster and more realistic than ever before. This presents both an opportunity and a challenge. On the one hand, design concepts can now be tested and conveyed with an unprecedented degree of visual accuracy. Conversely, whether through omission, extreme dramatization, or even intentional fakery, architects now have the ability to realistically depict the impossible. Furthermore, both clients and public are beginning to expect photorealistic imagery even at the earliest stages of a project, when supposed ‘realism’ can oftentimes belie the fundamentally speculative nature of design. Given the importance of these images in mediating between architects and the people they ultimately serve, CLOG will critically assess the state of renderings today.

We are proud to announce that Luca Silenzi, Spacelab Architects founder and director, is featured on the March issue of Domus – the prestigious international architecture and design magazine edited by Joseph Grima – with a paper on “architectural memes”.

“We think we’re original, but in reality we are carriers of, and work on, the ideas of others. Luca Silenzi borrows a concept from evolutionary theory to describe the processes involved in the communication and transfer of forms in contemporary architecture” (Domus 956, March 2012)

The exhibition is the result of a project initiated by Domus magazine, who in turn were inspired by the Arab Spring to invite architects and designers to take vast leaps of geopolitical imagination and create a physical link between Europe and Africa over the Gilbraltar Strait

Bonus track: as part of the exhibition Project Heracles: 200 Postcards from the Eurafrican Border, launching this Thursday 19 July at London’s The Gopher Hole, Bjarke Ingels/BIG makes a unique contribution: Ingels created two designs for banknotes commemorating the speculative yet all-too-overdue Eurafrican connection that Domus has dubbed Project Heracles. The highest denomination so far of the Euro—the €1,000 note—accompanies a projected new money, the Afro, depicting Egyptian activist and Arab Spring organizer Wael Ghonim. Like the new Euro bill, this imaginary pan-African currency commemorates the construction of the Eurafrican bridge. Learn more in Domusweb.

We are proud to announce that our Food Container_Remixed (2008), in its effort to lead architectural quality of trivial spaces to a higher level, awarded the honorable mention for the “IN/ARCH – ANCE Marche” prize: our “unboxed box” was shortlisted by the jury to compete in the national edition of the IN/ARCH Prize.

Thanks to the AGENCY founders Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller, who kindly invited us to contribute, we are in pole position in the continuous, looping Youtube playlist: a still-life of our workspace during last weeks (“Purple Haze” in the background was an unexpected – and uncut – phone call during the filming of the video…). In the words of Ersela Kripa: “The idea is to highlight the every day, mundane, and quotidian of architecture, and what it takes to make architecture”.

The installation will be exhibited inside the Nordic Pavilion fromOct 19 to Nov 22 2010. Enjoy!

‘Gotong Royong’ is usually translated into English as ‘reciprocity’ or ‘mutual assistance’. In Indonesia the term is applied across political, social, economic and cultural spheres. The aim of this competition was to “focus the possibilities of this rich term onto urban and architectural matters, […] to encourage architects and urban designers to research, dream, and speculate about Jakarta and its future. If we can liberate ourselves from petty politics and bureaucratic planning, what would a Gotong Royong Jakarta be like?” (from the competition brief).

Unfortunately, we aren’t in the winner podium…
However, here is our – provocative? – stuff, so far by “petty politics and bureaucratic planning”, approaching a bit much generic theme with a spongy tribute to the 70’s Superstudio’s “Monumento Continuo”. Enjoy.

Jakarta, 2009
“Greater Jakarta”: estimated at 25milion (2nd largest urban area in the world).
Visitors/city-users increase the congestion: severe traffic jams and overcrowdings ocurring almost every day.
40% of Jakarta is below sea level: air pollution, waste management, drinking water shortage, flooding (due to clogged sewage pipes/waterways, savage urbanization and deforestation).
Major buildings, highrises, services and residual public space are occasional and poorly connected, separated by endless traffic times. Seemingly, no solution.

A porous mega-structure, served with a new urban transport system (TransJakarta 2.0?), which integrates public spaces, hanging gardens, pedestrian promenades, commercial/residential/office functions, inner energy/water accumulators. A sample of what Jakarta aims to become.

Just can’t get enough
Trying to envision the future of Jakarta for this competition, our attention was to choice carefully the object of speculation. We intended this brief as an opportunity: finally liberated “from petty politics and bureaucratic planning”, we tried to make an happy revolution to the urban scale, and beyond.
“Gotong Royong” as a continuous monument to the coexistence.
Thus, as the problems of Jakarta are alike troubles for the resting 70% of similar megalopolis, the site of intervention can be paradoxically anywhere. This project for Jakarta is admittedly a sample of an Utopia. A sample of 2,500x500m over Jalan Sudirman-Thamrin and Jalan Mohammad Husni Thamrin.

The High-life
Jakarta Layer_02 integrates public infrastructure, public spaces, commercial, touristic, leisure and work functions, energy and water accumulation/production facilities.
The super-structure is 8m thick, and contains in depth one- or two-storied spaces. Tridimensional macro-holes, accurately positioned to respect settled distances from existing buildings and public spaces (diameters ranging by 75m to 350m), are designed to have a crucial contribution to the form-factor resistance. Smaller voids remain between the structure of the space-grid, to reduce weights.
Special designed surfaces integrate solar panels to capture the sun irradiation, so as aeolian generators taking advantage of the higher winds, both connected with a co-generation system inside the structure.
In the wet season, the abundant rain is captured in special multi-stage osmotic filtered tanks, and so given back to public as sanitary water.

The super-slab is shored up at the height of 230fts (70m) by mixed vertical supports, such as structural reticular pylons or entire reinforced new buildings, containing lift systems and stairs to reach the Layer_02 level, apart from water pipes, drainings, electrical and data lines . All the support structural system is arranged at the ground level in urban plots still free of buildings or siding main streets, on public property spaces.
Main accesses to the Layer_02 are arranged near huge new parkings and busway stations, directly connected with the parallel and efficient transport system above (monorail/maglev).

Layer_02 is theorically endless, upgradeable in all directions and with more or less concentration of covered surface. The lymph of the Layer is the seamless network of public spaces and transport, serving a corollary of public and private facilities.
To test it, we choose the condition 2 (im)mobility/”reshuffle”, pulling down a sample of the Layer_02 measuring 2.500m x 500m (1.250.000m2), oriented N-S over the joint between Jalan Sudirman-Thamrin and Jalan Mohammad Husni Thamrin. Pratically, a condition 2, remixed on the north side (congestion+access to the urban nucleus).

“And” is better than “Or”
What is Coexistence in Jakarta Layer_02? What we intend for Gotong Royong in this project?
Recipro-City: a Jakarta over Jakarta which not create a negation, a destruction, or – at worst – further congestion of the city we know today. Jakarta for us is Layer_02 and the original ground layer. Simply, the upper one supports the today-Jakarta, and can solve severe problems otherwise impossible to approach.
In other words: formal and informal; real and utopia; discontinuity and coherence; ended and endless.
The one of them contemporary with the another.